As I’m sure you’ve already read somewhere else today, Yahoo is banning working from home. This move has been met with derision as such a backwards step, but also with agreement from some former Yahoo employees. The quote that stood out most to me was this:

 A lot of people hid. There were all these employees [working remotely] and nobody knew they were still at Yahoo.

What struck me was how difficult it would be for an employee of a company with an established enterprise social network to hide in this way. Their absence would be noted both anecdotally (“Richard doesn’t seem to be in my activity stream much this week”) and statistically in usage reports.

I work from home all the time, but remain one of the most active contributors to BroadVision’s own internal Clearvaleenterprise social network. I’m not the most active any more, but almost everyone who has overtaken me also works from home all the time. Indeed, we consistently see much higher activity from home-workers than office-workers. On an enterprise social network you can...  Read the article

In a post on ReadWriteEnterprise, guest author Vijay Dheap, Mobile Security Strategist at IBM, outlines how organizations can effectively implement a mobile risk management strategy. Below is an excerpt of the post, but for the full version please read: The Mobile Enterprise: 4 Steps To Keeping It Secure [Infographic]

Security is a balancing act, especially when it comes to emerging technologies that promise to unlock massive business potential. Each new wave of change requires an enterprise to adapt its security posture, or risk being left behind – or exposed to unmanaged risk.

Mobile is no different.

Given the dynamic nature of the mobile market (see mobile stats in the infographic below), it can be difficult for an enterprise to define a mobile risk management strategy. Organizational inertia alone can lead to...  Read the article

If we truly believe in customer “relationships”, then the concept that the customer is always right is unfortunately flawed, because very few people are ALWAYS right. Customers can be irrational, selfish, irresponsible, and even unprofitable.

As in any relationship, sometimes there is mis-alignment of expectations and lack of a compelling value proposition for both sides. The opportunity for value exchange changes and evolves over time. The duty of an organization is to continually listen, show empathy, gain a deeper understanding of needs and jobs, and provide a product or service offering that provides significant value for their customers, or better yet, provide a platform for customers to co-create their own products and services, and support each other in their mutual journeys and jobs to be done.

To fail to recognize that some customers are...  Read the article

Ashley Verrill – a expert with CRM reviewer SoftwareAdvice.com – interviewed me recently for the second edition of CRM’s Next 5 in 5. This report was an update from predictions five of my industry cohorts made about technologies that will change CRM in the next five years. Special thanks to Ashley for the conversation and for providing the edited snapshot of our discussion below:

Ashley: You’ve talked a lot about how the importance of advancements relative to contextualizing CRM — such as Mobile, Big Data and Social – are a little over amplified (though still important). From your perspective, are there any products or services out there that have actually made real innovation and change to how we use CRM systems?

Brian: Digital networks have significantly transformed how we as people interact with other people, information, and increasingly devices and machines. More and more of our lives are moving into the digital realm. Where we are. What we are doing. Who we know. What we say or think or like. The technologies that capitalize on this increasing wealth of information are the ones that will endure past the hype. These innovators will advance our capabilities in three primary ways: ...
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In an article I wrote last year titled “Why Every Company Needs to be More Like IBM and Less Like Apple”, I compared the cultures of both companies and how over the past 25 years they had flipped: “Today’s Big Blue is the antithesis of Big Brother. It’s ‘Big Open’. A transparent, nimble, collaborative organization known more for listening and engaging customers than for dictating to them. While ironically, some say Apple now resembles Big Brother given their propensity for tight controls.”

That article and the number of follow on pieces written to support and rebuke my argument stirred up a heated debate that continues... Read the article

Last week I met with executives from large traditional manufacturing firms asking what the ideas of social business might mean for them. What kind of changes might be ahead?

There is a saying that without customers, you have no business being in business. Accordingly, customer focus has been the dominant idea in business since the 1960s. Businesses have focused on customers as an audience for products, services and marketing messages.

But unfortunately many businesses still consistently miss the big shift: customers have transformed from an audience to actors. Firms don’t create value for customers. The way customers actively use the products and services creates value. More value or less value.

Many troubled companies still focus mainly on the wrong things. Their turnaround efforts don’t typically involve the customer. Managers streamline the businesses mainly through cutting costs; they re-engineer the internal processes to make them more cost-efficient. But they regularly leave out the most important part of the equation. They don’t start from the outside, the customer, and work in. They don’t create...

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The path to becoming a social business, one which has a more engaged workforce, customer-base and supply chain, is one which ultimately leads to greater business success. What components, however, do you need to consider putting in place from a strategic standpoint?

My graphic below attempts to put each of the components I feel any organisation should consider implementing or integrating into their social collaboration environment.

The blue cans at the bottom of the arrow are the... Read the article

This is undoubtedly the right direction, and frankly the only direction for corporate survival and growth, in my opinion. A key and often underrepresented component of developing meaningful and profitable customer relationships is TRUST. I’ve written more about thathere.

So how are we collectively doing being customer focused? Do “what we say” and “what we do” actually line up?... Read the article

Recently I've found myself reading a number of articles and blog posts decrying the untimely demise of the social business movement. So what do you think, has social for business run its course and now we should just move on, because there's "nothing to see here"? Have businesses given it a good go and, finding no value, are they abandoning their efforts? Okay, right up front here, let me say clearly, social for business is not only not dead, it's thriving and delivering lots of value to businesses! In fact, I believe that the changes associated with social business are absolutely critical for businesses in the information age if they want to attract and retain the best employees and partners and if they want to meet the expectations of their customers. In our last social business survey conducted Summer 2012, we found that 67% of North American businesses were already using some social tools for business, up from 42% the prior year. So if that's true, why all the doom and gloom predictions?

I think that there's still a general lack of understanding around what social business is and isn't. If you think it's just about implementing / using new technology your wrong, social business isn't a new marketing campaign on,..  Read the article

This is a sequel of Edgar Schein Organizational Culture and Leadership review, focussing on the sole Chapter 20. In this chapter, the great man discuss Learning Culture and the Learning Leader.

Schein shares Gary Hamel points of view regarding today’s market and economy : we have no idea what tomorrow’s world will be except that “It will be different, more complex more fast paced and more culturally diverse. This means that...  Read the article